The Woman in Question
by Osheen Nevoy
Summary: Gerard Stiles sits in a Portuguese jail cell charged with murder. Neither Gerard nor the Portuguese police dream of the true nature of the supposed murder victim-a mysterious being who goes by the name of Laura Murdoch. (Written for the Dark Shadows 2016 Digital Fanzine.)


**The Woman in Question**

 _By Alex Service_

 **" _Held on suspicion of murder by the Portuguese … Did you really murder the woman in question?"_**

 ** _"If your report is correct, you will read that the charges against me were dropped and I was released."_**

 **" _But only because the body mysteriously disappeared."_**

 ** _\- Gabriel Collins and Gerard Stiles,_ Dark Shadows _episode 1115_**

Lieutenant Pedro Carvalho of the Lisbon Municipal Guard swore under his breath as he stomped down the basement steps after his sergeant. All the way along the corridor from Carvalho's office, Sergeant Silva had refused to tell him why the devil they were making this early-morning visit to the basement.

When Silva had raced into Carvalho's office, wild-eyed and white of face, Carvalho assumed the sergeant was reporting some new riot or revolt. But Silva only croaked out, "That foreign woman's body, Lieutenant. Come down to the basement. You've got to see."

"What _about_ the foreign woman's body?" snapped Carvalho.

Sergeant Silva mulishly shook his head. "Just come down, sir. You won't believe it unless you see it."

Now Lieutenant Carvalho allowed himself to hope that something about the body would give them proof of murder. Heaven knew why they wouldn't have seen it before. Maybe the inroads of decomposition had revealed some new evidence. A slit throat, perhaps, or a rope around the neck, or a good, sizeable cavity in the skull.

 _That English parasite won't get away with this,_ Carvalho thought with satisfaction. _We'll have him dangling from the gallows where he belongs. His own victim's body is going to testify against him. The murdered woman herself will end his career of fortune-telling, gambling and debauchery._

Just why decomposition should reveal any new evidence, Carvalho wasn't sure. He had thought the body so badly burned that there wasn't much left to decompose. But if police work taught a man anything, it was that he could always see something new—and that a strange case could always get stranger.

He had cause to remember that thought a few moments later, as he and Sergeant Silva stood staring down at an object on the basement floor.

The object was a filthy bed sheet. It was wrapped around itself, just the way it had been wrapped around the foreign woman's blackened body. Carvalho could see at a glance that the sheet was empty now.

Crouching down beside it, Carvalho took hold of an edge and started gingerly unwrapping the sheet. Inside, just like before, it was stained with soot from the woman's corpse. When the sheet lay all the way open, the fabric even bore a rough outline of her body, formed by the soot. It looked, Carvalho thought, like a foul parody of the marks left on the holy shroud by the body of Our Lord and Savior.

The sheet and the soot were there. But—as with Our Lord and Savior—the woman's body was gone.

* * *

Upstairs in his cell, the prisoner Gerard Stiles wondered what it would feel like to hang.

Would he be one of the lucky few whose necks snapped at once? Or would he end his days jerking in the air, strangling slowly while the spectators made bets on the question of how long he would take to die?

Maybe a kindly gaoler would yank on his feet to break his neck. He doubted he would be that fortunate. From what he had seen of the Lisbon constabulary and gaolers, they would more likely join in the betting than concern themselves with his suffering.

He told himself, _I'm not hanged yet._

There was still a chance that some gaoler's wife or daughter would enter the scene. Hell, he couldn't afford to be choosy. Even a gaoler's mother or grandmother would do. Wife, daughter, mother or grandmother, he would flatter her, bat his eyelashes at her and tug on her every last heartstring, and hopefully he would convince her to set him free. It was the type of thing that would happen in a novel or on the stage. He hoped the gaoler's hypothetical relative would appreciate the drama of the situation, and would know the role she was expected to play.

The smugly disapproving Lisbon policemen would probably not believe it of him, but this was the first time he had been inside a gaol cell. No one had managed to lock him up before—not while he was picking pockets with his mother, not during that embezzlement incident in Paris, not once in his career of gun-running and smuggling. The irony of it dragged a pained, croaking laugh from him.

After all the things he _had_ done, here he was locked up and likely facing death for a crime he hadn't committed!

He didn't think the municipal guard had learned about his past. If they had, that smirking lieutenant would certainly have rubbed Gerard's nose in it by now. But he thought it was only a matter of time before they did learn. And not very much time, either. Influential men who had bones to pick with him would be sure to share his besmirched past with the police. That really would throw him from the frying pan into the fire.

The homely saying made him grimace. Then he choked back a sob.

 _Fire._

Bile rose in his throat as he thought of Laura's unrecognizable body. The lieutenant had taken obvious pleasure in making him look at it, down in the guard headquarters' basement. The scarcely human form hadn't looked to him like it could ever have been alive. The only way of even knowing that _thing_ had been a woman was the little, pearl-encircled pendant Laura always wore, peeking up at him from out of the blackness at her throat.

He felt suddenly overwhelmed by memories of the corpse's smell. That acrid, nostril-stinging odor, with its sickly sweet undertone that seemed so unutterably wrong. Remembering, he thought he might vomit again, like he'd done down there in the basement.

He shoved aside both nausea and memory, replacing them with other thoughts. He wondered which powerful man who held a grudge against him was responsible for his being here. He was sure someone had suggested to the police that Laura and her townhouse were not the victims of an accidental fire. Someone whose word had weight with the municipal guard's upper echelons had clearly dropped the hint that the dead woman's lover had tried to rob her, got caught in the act, killed her, and then hoped that a fire would hide his crimes.

 _Which of you bastards do I have to thank for this?_ Gerard wondered.

 _Was it the Marquis de Viana, because of my attentions to his wife? Although more to the point,_ his thoughts observed, _the marquis_ ought _to object to his wife's attentions to_ me. _Or maybe the Viscount de Arriaga has grown tired of his regular payments to ensure I do not make public the many ways I have witnessed him cheating at cards._

That same night he had first told the viscount that he needed to be paid for his silence was the night when he'd first met Laura.

His card game with the viscount, unsurprisingly, ended when Gerard politely applied to him for blackmail. After the Viscount de Arriaga stormed away, Gerard moved on to one of his other money-making enterprises, the reading of palms. He had no shortage of customers among the ladies and gentlemen wearied from their exertions on the assembly room's dance floor. The majority of his customers that night had been as unremarkable as usual. He smoothly made his way through the standard flattering platitudes, until the moment he looked up and saw _her_ standing before him. Her eyes gazed deep into his as she remarked in a lazy, amused tone, "I have been told that my palm is impossible to read. I wonder what you might find within it."

Moments later she was seated across from him, her right hand held out to him over the little round table. Rather than studying her palm, he would far rather have been admiring her piercing blue eyes, her elegant throat that poets would describe as "swanlike," and the way she looked in that dress which seemed to exist solely for the purpose of encouraging men to imagine helping her out of it. But, dutifully, he turned his attention to the tracery of lines on her palm.

The first thing he noticed when his fingers touched her skin was the surprising coldness of her hand. Over time he would learn that she seldom felt any warmer than this. It lent credibility to her story of suffering from some nameless illness, although he never saw a sign of it beyond that strange chill and the way it led her to spend hours of each day by her fireside, sitting close to the fire as though begging it to share its warmth.

Usually when he read palms, he paid scarcely any notice to the actual lines on the hand. He would make a few standard comments and then would go off along a flight of fancy inspired by the impressions that touching the person's hand conveyed to his mind. Just the act of touching a person seemed to give him some sense of how they thought and felt. From that he could weave a meaningful-sounding fortune, throwing in some perfunctory references to the map of lines upon the hand.

But one of the lines on this woman's hand struck him. He gazed at her lifeline, unlike any he had seen before. The lifeline was broken in so many places that it seemed almost a succession of dots, not a line at all.

"It's true," he told her quietly. "Your palm is difficult to read. You have a long life, a very long one, but it is filled with a great many changes—more changes than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes. You are at the beginning of a journey, and you do not wish to face it, because you dread to make this journey alone. You are seeking someone who will undertake the journey with you. You know the voyage can bring you joy if you have companionship along the way; if there is someone else by your side to help you hold back the dark and the cold."

Normally, if he had said such things in a palm-reading, they would have been mostly claptrap. It would have been the standard offer he delivered to every wealthy woman he encountered, that translated roughly as follows: _you pay for my room and board, and keep me in the manner to which I would like to become accustomed. In return, I will make you feel beautiful. I will make you believe you are wanted. And I guarantee to give you more pleasure than any other man in your life._

What he'd said to Laura that night, he supposed, amounted to much the same thing. But the strange thing was that he had given no thought to his words. He hadn't crafted them as he usually did. He hadn't made any calculations of the best approach to take in order to make himself seem irresistible. The words had simply poured out from him without any thought at all. There had seemed nothing else he could say, from the instant he saw Laura's lifeline and he touched her cold hand.

When he looked up from her palm, he found himself again caught by her gaze. He knew she was smiling at him, but it seemed he could see nothing apart from her captivating eyes.

She said to him, "You have a rare skill for reading palms. Would you care to show me what other skills you possess?"

Now that her fire-ravaged corpse lay down there in the basement, even his happiest memories of Laura caused Gerard to shudder. He thought of the beautiful, passionate woman he had known, and he thought of the black, lifeless ruin lurking below.

He wondered whether, as the flames leapt to consume her, her icy skin had finally felt warm.

* * *

Late that afternoon, Lieutenant Carvalho stood before his commandant's desk, biting his tongue and seething in outrage.

"I see no choice but to drop the case," Captain Moreira was saying. "The man Stiles has supporters among the English entourage at court. The British Ambassador already sent his _attaché_ to me, to inquire into the man's welfare and argue for his release. I presume you're aware how greatly the queen values those friends who have been with her since her English sojourn. Presumably you also know how frequently Her Majesty's government has relied on the support of English troops. But I don't think you realize the true precariousness of this government, or how frighteningly close to overthrow Her Majesty has come, more than once. This man Stiles may seem, to you, nothing more than a shoddy adventurer. But his case could have repercussions for the entire nation."

Lieutenant Carvalho stubbornly pointed out, "He also has influential enemies at court. Men of power and position, who will be much displeased if we allow this murderer to escape."

The captain stood and leaned toward Carvalho across his desk. "That would be all very well, if we had any proof. But we have no more proof of the crime. The one piece of evidence we had is gone."

To his fury, Carvalho realized he was blushing. "Sir," he ploughed ahead, "we can get to the bottom of that, with a little more time. I'm certain Stiles or some friend of his managed to suborn someone here at headquarters. With more time to investigate, we can learn who was paid to spirit away the body. That will give us a better case against him than we had before, if we can prove he was involved in trying to remove the evidence—"

"If, Pedro. If." Captain Moreira shook his head and sighed. "We have no time for 'ifs.' The English are breathing down my neck _now_. And when their ambassador learns we no longer have the body as evidence, he may even take his complaint to the queen herself. Do you want to draw down Her Majesty's displeasure on us, simply for the sake of crushing some foreign mountebank?"

Carvalho felt his innards curdling with defeat. He could make no other answer but, "No, sir."

Reluctantly he made his way upstairs. At the prisoner's cell, he felt his usual disgust at the sight of that too-handsome face. At least he could take satisfaction from the painful-looking cut on the man's forehead. Gerard Stiles claimed he had received that injury while escaping the fire. Carvalho firmly believed the woman had inflicted it instead, in the struggle to defend her life.

Carvalho unlocked the barred door and yanked it open. As always, he switched to French so that he and his hated prisoner could converse. Stiles' knowledge of Portuguese, Carvalho had learned in the process of arresting him, was nothing less than a barrier to communication.

"Get out," Carvalho snarled. "You're free to go."

Stiles stood up from the cell's cot, with a wondering stare. He echoed, "Free to go?"

"You heard me. You've won this round. But you listen to me: I will learn just whom it was you seduced into removing your victim's body. When I do learn, it will be best for you if you are no longer within our borders."

The damnable man was still staring. He asked, "What do you mean, removing the body?"

"I have got very little patience left," Carvalho grated. "Get out of here before I lose my last remnants of it."

Stiles seemed to pull himself together. He stood up straighter, adjusted his rumpled clothes and then walked out from the cell. Planting himself in front of the outraged policeman, he declared, "I don't know what you're talking about. What has happened to Laura's body?"

"Don't pretend you don't know. Somehow, you corrupted a member of the guard into taking the body out of here. With the evidence gone, I have been ordered to release you. I advise you to get out now and to go as far from me as possible. It will not be well for you if I ever see you again."

Stiles stepped closer to Carvalho until the two of them were almost nose-to-nose. They were nearly the same height. Stiles' cold eyes glared into Carvalho's furious ones.

Gerard Stiles said, "If the Lisbon Municipal Guard cannot even keep track of a corpse in their own basement, I am not particularly inclined to be afraid of your threats."

Carvalho hissed, "You degenerate filth. It's not the municipal guard threatening you. It's me. _You get out of here while you still can."_

His former prisoner took a step back from him and smiled.

"Very well, lieutenant," Stiles told him airily. "Since you have asked me to leave so politely, I will take my departure. Might I trouble you for the money I had on me when I was arrested?"

It took all that was left of Carvalho's shredded patience to hold himself back from throttling the man. "No," was his flat reply. "You might not. We will keep the money to pay for your room and board."

Stiles' expression tightened slightly in anger, but not enough to give Carvalho any real satisfaction. The suspected murderer walked to the door. Instead of leaving, he turned to face Lieutenant Carvalho once more.

"No matter what you think of me," Gerard Stiles said quietly, "I did not kill Laura Murdoch. Nor did I have anything to do with whatever has happened to her body." He gave a slight bow and said, "Goodbye, lieutenant. Thank you for your charming hospitality."

Lieutenant Carvalho waited until he no longer heard footsteps on the stairs. When he felt sure that Stiles was out of earshot, he growled in rage and hurled his ring of keys across the room.

He wasn't certain whether to thank God that all of this was over, or to vow to himself that it was not.

* * *

Gerard stood in the street, staring up at Laura's townhouse.

He thought, _I don't want to be here!_

He wouldn't have returned at all, if his _bête noir_ the lieutenant had not seen fit to keep his money. He needed cash, and he knew where he could find some, if the fire hadn't destroyed the hidey-hole in which Laura kept it. But to get to that money, he had to go back _in there._

From outside, the fire had left little trace. One of their windows that faced onto the street was broken. The glass in the other window had survived, but he could see the dark wraithlike form of one charred curtain, forlornly dangling in it.

He knew, from what he had seen and heard on the day of the fire, that the destruction had not spread beyond the room he and Laura shared. The structure of the building was intact. It would be perfectly safe for him to go up there. Perfectly safe, except for the way it made his insides churn.

He still had his key, along with his pocket watch. The Lisbon Municipal Guard had not seen fit to confiscate either of those. He went to the door and let himself in, fighting back a surge of foreboding as he started up the evening-shadowed stairs.

He always thought of this place as Laura's townhouse, but in reality the two of them had shared just one lone room. Although Laura had never seemed in want of funds, she certainly was not the wealthy patroness Gerard hoped to acquire. In the four months he had lived with her, he'd kept cash flowing into their establishment through the ongoing services he provided to rich, lonely women. He suspected Laura had the same type of business relationship with a number of wealthy men of Lisbon, but he had never inquired into her activities in the hours the two of them did not spend together.

A number of times he had asked himself why he continued their liaison. Why did he not, instead, improve his situation with one or other of his more prosperous patronesses, when the opportunity presented itself? But he had never done it. He had never even tried. Somehow, since the first night when she brought him home with her, he couldn't imagine _not_ being with Laura. It seemed impossible to think of ever trying to break free.

 _Well,_ he told himself bitterly, _I will have to do without her now._

He squelched another twinge of warning in his mind. Then he unlocked the door to their room and walked inside.

He had never seen a stranger scene of desolation. He couldn't understand why the fire had acted as it had. It was as though the flames had been following orders to destroy everything in the room, but not to touch anything beyond it.

All the furniture, the wallpaper, and everything Laura and Gerard had owned, was reduced to blackened ruin. The heavy stink of wet ashes hung in the air, thanks to the buckets of water that neighbors and guardsmen had flung onto the blaze.

Gerard walked deeper into the room. He grimaced at the black, charred mess that was barely recognizable as the bed he'd been sleeping in when the disaster began.

At first he had thought it was the crackle of flames that woke him. Later, thinking back, he wasn't certain if he'd been awakened by the flames, or by Laura's singing.

She was singing, standing naked by the fireplace. A wall of fire already rose between her and him, momentarily obscuring her from his sight. He couldn't understand the words she was singing or recognize the tune. He only knew that the wild chant seemed achingly familiar.

For the first unbelievable seconds Gerard lay frozen with horror. Then he leaped out of their bed, shouting to her.

"Laura!" he yelled. "Don't be afraid. I'll get you out."

She stopped her singing, and she laughed. "Afraid? Why should I be afraid?" Her voice carried to him easily through the flames. "Won't you come with me, Gerard? It isn't difficult. All you have to do is want to go."

He'd never had reason before to think that Laura was insane, but he felt almost certain of it now. He could wait to worry about her sanity, though, until he'd gotten both of them out of there. He grabbed a blanket from the bed and the water jug off the bureau, and soaked the blanket with water. He didn't much like the idea of jumping naked through the flames with just a wet blanket to shield him. Still, he thought it should be protection enough to get him through safely, and hopefully to get both of them out, as well—so long as Laura didn't fight him too hard. Flinching and holding the blanket over him like a tent, he started toward the wall of fire.

The flames soared suddenly farther upward, nearly reaching to the ceiling. He could barely see Laura beyond them, but he did see her fling her arms upward. He heard her cry out in a voice of triumph, "From the ashes of the old, comes the new!"

Something fell. It crashed into his head and knocked him to the floor. He lay on his front, stunned, blood dripping into his eyes. Staggering to his feet again, he saw what had hit him. It was the crystal chandelier, with the rope that had suspended it burnt through.

Now he felt like his skin was blistering, from the heat of that wall of flames. He couldn't even see Laura now. But he could hear her. Once again, she was singing.

Gerard ran for the chair by his side of the bed and seized the clothes he had draped on the chair. He grabbed up his boots from the floor beside it. Then, clutching his clothing and boots in his arms, he ran.

He hadn't stopped running until he was downstairs and standing outside in the street, naked as he was. He put on his clothes as he stood there, shivering from more than just the chill of a March dawn.

He hadn't even known it was dawn outside, when he was in there with the fire. In there, the crimson light of the flames seemed to define the entire world. Dazedly he realized that he ought to call for help. But by the time he thought of that, it was no longer necessary. He heard people shouting, up and down the street. He stood watching as men with buckets in their hands ran into the house and up the stairs. He gazed at the gleaming flames that danced in there, beyond the windows, and he imagined that he could still hear Laura sing.

He was still standing there two or three hours later, when men of the municipal guard carried the sheet-shrouded body out of the house. Some neighbor woman took pity on him then and herded him into her kitchen. She sat him down at the table and tried to return him to the land of the living with the aid of a huge mug of coffee. Some hours after that, he had not touched the coffee, nor any of the food in which she tried to interest him, when Lieutenant Carvalho of the Lisbon Municipal Guard arrived to place him under arrest.

Now Gerard shook his head as he gazed at the ruined room. One thing seemed clear to him, even if it wasn't clear to that moronic, moralizing municipal guard lieutenant: Laura Murdoch had set the fire herself.

She had not only set it, he thought she must have poured something around the room to make it burn faster. Lamp oil, probably. Perhaps that explained why everything _in_ the room had burned, but not the walls or the rest of the house. Almost everything that had burned, he thought, must have been things on which she had poured the oil.

Gerard shuddered.

He thought, _She must have really loved me_. _Even if she_ was _willing to burn up the room with me sleeping inside it. She must have loved me, because she didn't pour any of the lamp oil on_ me.

He ordered himself to get on with it, and strode over to the fireplace. He tried not to recall the almost-nightly sight of Laura sitting here, gazing dreamily into the fire. Above all, he wished he could bury his memories of her standing here that night, while light from the rising flames gleamed on her naked form and made her seem like a statue carved from gold.

He went to the left edge of the fireplace and pried at one of the bricks. From night after night of watching Laura from under his eyelashes when she believed he was asleep, he knew the brick in question was two bricks in and three bricks down from the top left corner.

The loose brick came out easily in his hands. He set it down on the hearth. Inside was a storage space several bricks deep. The first thing he pulled from the hole was a leather pouch that held a satisfying number of banknotes and coins. Then he brought out the only other item in the hole: a greenish, squat metal urn. He thought it was probably bronze. Its rounded body had three short legs and two large handles. The carved designs swirling around it had an ancient look to him, but he didn't bother trying to guess the urn's date. There was a lid with another handle on top. The undulating form of the handle looked like it was meant to be some animal. He couldn't tell if it was supposedly a dragon, or a snake.

Gerard tugged on the handle. The lid didn't budge. He brought the urn up closer to his face and scowled at it. Running his thumbnail around beneath the rim of the lid, he didn't find any evidence that the thing was sealed shut. All the same, no matter how he yanked, the lid didn't move at all.

He knew this lid did come off. Some nights when he had looked over from the bed to see Laura sitting by the fire, he had seen her holding this urn in her lap and had seen her remove the lid.

He told himself he would solve this mystery later. Now that he had money again, he could rent a room and could treat himself to a meal more luxurious than prison fare. Once he had a room and a full stomach, he could return his attention to prying open this urn.

Gerard felt almost light-hearted as he hurried down the stairs. Locking the door behind him, he told himself it was time for him to also lock away this chapter of his past. He turned toward the street—and recoiled in horror. He backed up until he slammed against the locked door.

The woman standing in front of him smiled. She greeted him, "Hello, Gerard."

It was her, Laura Murdoch, every detail as he remembered. Her sea blue eyes regarded him with their familiar expression of amusement. Her golden hair was arranged in its usual tantalizing ringlets. In the hollow of her throat nestled that same gold-and-pearl pendant: the pendant he had last seen around the black, charred neck of the corpse in the municipal guard's basement.

He didn't recognize the dress she was wearing. It was a bright orange day dress that reminded him uncomfortably of flames. Naturally, it made sense that he wouldn't recognize the dress. All the clothes she had owned before were now nothing but ashes.

It made sense, except that when her clothes burned up, she had burned up, too.

Laura reached out to him. She took the urn and the money pouch from his unresisting hands. Dimpling and looking unutterably charming, she told him, "Thank you for fetching these for me. I didn't like the thought of going up there and getting soot on my new dress." She spoke in English, the language they had used together since the day he moved in with her, when she told him that she was from America.

Finding his voice at last, Gerard choked out a protest. "You're dead. I saw you die."

Her amusement deepened. Shaking her head, she remarked, "Oh, Gerard. I thought that a man like you, with your interest in all things mystical and occult, would remember your mythology. Don't you recall the legend of the phoenix? The mythical bird that lives forever?"

As she spoke on, her voice dropped to a whisper. "When the phoenix feels death calling, it knows what it must do. At dawn, the phoenix awakens and begins to sing. It sings as the sun rises, and as the flames rise around it, higher … higher. They rise until the bird is utterly consumed, until nothing is left of it but ashes. But from those ashes, the phoenix is reborn."

Holding the urn and the pouch in one hand, she reached up and stroked Gerard's face with the other. A sound escaped him that was part gasp, part sob.

Her hand was warm now. The unearthly chill she had always had before was gone.

No, he realized, her hand wasn't simply warm. It was hot. It was so hot that in ordinary circumstances, he would have assumed she had a fever. Staring at her, he tried to convince himself that _he_ had a fever, instead. He was feverish, delirious and dreaming. Delirium would explain why he saw her and heard her; why he could feel the touch of a woman he knew to be an incinerated corpse.

The dead woman playfully tapped his nose with her fingertip. She observed, "There's really no point in our standing out here in the street. I am going to begin another journey soon. I hope that you will want to keep me company."

"No!" Gerard pleaded. " _I don't want to go with you._ "

Laura stood on her tiptoes and brushed a kiss across his lips. "Silly boy." She stepped back from him again and smiled indulgently. "You've no cause to be afraid. This journey I'm making is to America—not to the fire."

* * *

Despite Laura's assurance, Gerard considered the month that followed the most frightening era of his life.

That first night after Laura's return, they spent together in a middling hotel. Gerard had assumed that his utter terror would reduce his effectiveness in bed. But, to his pleased surprise, he was spared that humiliation. He guessed it made sense that a woman capable of returning from the dead also had magical means of assuring her lover's potency. He wished that while she was at it, she would stop him from seeing visions of flames whenever he felt her new, fever-hot touch.

The next day they spent mundanely enough, shopping for clothing and luggage. The day after that, they sailed to England.

On arrival in Plymouth, they embarked on a several days' journey by road which reminded Gerard of just how much he loathed traveling overland. The stifling enclosed feeling that the walls of the stagecoach gave him, not to mention the overland equivalent of seasickness, were almost enough to distract him from his fear that Laura might at any moment compel him to combust.

When the stagecoach deposited the passengers and their baggage at the coaching inn in Bristol, all Gerard wanted was to obtain a sizeable bottle of rum and forget the rigors of the voyage. Laura, however, had the next phase of their journey planned. She rallied her troop of one, and led him—on foot, for which Gerard was grateful—to the office of the Great Western Steam Ship Company, a few blocks away on Trinity Street.

A harried-looking gentleman in the office introduced himself to them as managing director Claxton. He greeted with astonished delight the news that "Mr. and Mrs. Gerard Stiles, of Lisbon" wished to obtain passage on the maiden voyage of the steam ship _Great Western_ to New York.

"I congratulate you, madam," Claxton declared, "for being undeterred by rumor-mongerers and nay-sayers. After that unfortunate fire in the engine room last week, fully fifty passengers cancelled their reservations. You and your husband will bring our total number of passengers to nine—on a ship that can accommodate 128! I can assure you that all your wants will receive immediate attention, since our stewards and waiters significantly out-number the passengers. And you need give yourselves no concern regarding that fire. It was doused in a matter of minutes, and the two small fire engines we have on board did sterling service in the incident. I myself will be journeying with you on the maiden voyage. That should give all the proof required of my confidence in the vessel's safety."

"Have no fear that we will cancel our booking, Mr. Claxton," Laura assured him, with her radiant smile. "We are not the sort to be deterred by a little fire."

As they strolled arm-in-arm back to the inn, Gerard Stiles of Lisbon turned with quirked-up eyebrows toward his "wife." He remarked, "I suppose you will say you had nothing to do with that unfortunate fire in the engine room—which just so happened to ensure that there would be berths on the ship available for us?"

She smiled innocently up at him. "Why, Gerard, how could I have anything to do with it? You know I was nowhere near that ship at the time."

At two o'clock the next afternoon, "Mr. and Mrs. Gerard Stiles" joined their seven fellow passengers on a rattletrap little steamboat that ferried them out to the big, gleaming new paddle wheeler waiting at the mouth of the Avon. Whether or not the mysterious powers of his "wife" had been responsible for the engine room fire, Gerard reflected that the nine of them had cause to be thankful that all other passengers had canceled their bookings.

The grand saloon, with its gold paint and its columns shaped like palm trees, was doubtless a splendid sight. Gerard and Laura made suitably impressed-sounding noises on being told by a young deck officer that the cabin doors, which opened off the saloon, had all been painted by no less a personage than Mr. Edward Thomas Parris, historical painter to the Queen. But while they expressed themselves charmed by the painting of Cupid embracing Psyche which graced their cabin door, the 7 by 8 foot cabin did strike Gerard as rather a glorified closet. To think that under ordinary circumstances, they would need to fit three trunks into the cabin along with the two passengers and their narrow bunks, presented a humorously undignified picture to Gerard's mind. As it was, they and the other seven passengers were each graciously permitted to commandeer the cabin adjacent to theirs as a storage location for their luggage.

The ship was scheduled to depart that afternoon, but a gale had been blowing up all day. It hit in full force just after the passengers came aboard. The captain elected to wait out the gale. They spent the night riding at anchor, while the ship pitched and rolled like a toy that some giant's child was picking up and shaking. Gerard, thanks to the many ocean voyages in his past, was untroubled by the ship's motion, and Laura—whatever she might actually be—also seemed immune to seasickness. Their fellow passengers were not so fortunate. They staggered around the grand saloon that evening with their faces tinged to various shades of white and green. All had retired to their miniscule cabins long before the lights-out hour of eleven o'clock.

The _Great Western_ 's maiden voyage finally commenced at ten o'clock the next morning, on Sunday the 8th of April, 1838. Gerard spent a great many hours of that journey cultivating the acquaintance of managing director Claxton, Mr. Matthews the mate, Mr. Phillips the youngest of the deck officers, and Mr. Pearne the chief engineer. He had a vaguely-formed plan at the back of his mind that, should he manage to free himself from Laura, he might be able to secure a job aboard the _Great Western_ for its return journey to Bristol. That was always assuming, of course, that the ship survived to return, and that Laura did not cause it to burst into flames in the middle of the Atlantic.

He told himself there was no reason to believe she would do any such thing. If she really had some kinship with the mythical phoenix, wasn't there supposedly some lengthy stretch of time between occasions when the bird set itself alight? A hundred years, perhaps, or possibly five hundred? There wasn't a reason in the world to think that Laura would set herself on fire again, barely one week after the last time.

All the same, he made certain to familiarize himself with the locations of all four lifeboats. Managing director Claxton, beamingly proud of the vessel's two small fire engines, was only too glad to share with Gerard the details of the engines' workings. Gerard avidly committed these lessons to memory, all the while praying that he would have no need for them.

In another setting, he might have attempted to distract Laura from incendiary urges by keeping her in bed with him as much as proved physically possible. But on board the _Great Western_ , such day-and-night debauchery was impracticable. With all of the cabins opening off the grand saloon, and with the wall partitions having approximately the noise-reducing qualities of a sheet of paper, it didn't seem practical to disport themselves while their fellow passengers ate luncheon or played whist outside their door.

After everyone retired for the night, the enforced near-silence in which they conducted their carnal explorations gave an extra, illicit thrill to the proceedings. But in the hours of daylight, that thrill would be transformed into annoyance.

So Laura and Gerard comported themselves as model passengers. They genteelly socialized with their fellows, once the general epidemic of seasickness was past. They took part in hundreds of card games. They gathered for innumerable sing-alongs around the piano at the stern of the saloon, with Gerard and Miss Eliza Cross of Bristol taking turns as pianist. Gerard helped everyone wile away the time by reading the cards for them and reading their palms, and he scrupulously performed these services free of charge. He knew he would have no chance of securing employment on this ship, if her officers saw him as an undesirable who sought to profit from his fellow passengers.

 _Of course,_ he asked himself bitterly, _how can I dream I have the chance of employment here? How can I dream of doing anything besides trailing after Laura as her combination lap dog and love slave?_

He prayed that she would someday set him free, but he didn't dare to ask it of her. He dreaded to learn that his only means of escaping her was through burning to death.

Night after night in the blackness of their tiny cabin, as the pitch and roll of the ship seemed to mimic their own gyrations on the bunk, he hoped the sheer onslaught of pleasure would drive his fears from his mind. But in those hours he found himself farther from escape than ever.

Though the darkness prevented him from seeing Laura with his eyes, he saw her all-too- clearly in his mind. And the things he saw terrified him.

He saw Laura with flames everywhere around her. He saw the fire wreathe in tendrils through her hair. He saw it soar upward from her shoulders like enormous red-gold wings.

To the amazed relief of Gerard Stiles, Esquire, the steam ship _Great Western_ and her passengers arrived in New York Harbor without catching on fire. Fulfilling the hopes of her designers and owners, her voyage took a mere, record-breaking sixteen days. As far as Gerard Stiles was concerned, that was sixteen days too long.

Only on their arrival did Gerard learn that New York was not their ultimate destination. Laura told him almost nothing of where they _were_ going. She said merely that there was a certain place she felt the need to visit from time to time.

They stayed two nights in New York City. To Gerard's continued relieved satisfaction, when the day of their departure dawned, the hotel they'd stayed in had not burned down.

This time Laura had some mercy on him, and did not embark them on another overland journey. Instead she secured passage for them on a freighting schooner dubbed the _Industry_ , sailing for Boston and then continuing eastward to the State of Maine. The _Industry_ lacked the _Great Western_ 's record-breaking steam engine and its paintings by the historical painter to the Queen, but it did provide Laura and Gerard with a cabin large enough that they could walk between the door and their bunk without needing to clamber over their trunks. This cabin also had the advantage of there not being seven other passengers dining and playing cards just outside their door.

The third morning after they left New York, the _Industry_ docked at a town of which Gerard had never heard. Laura awoke him with kisses and with some intimate attentions to his person, and she murmured to him, "We've arrived, Gerard. We're going ashore here. Welcome to Collinsport."

When they had dressed and gone up on deck, he heard her issue instructions which puzzled him. As usual, they also gave him a twinge of dread.

Only Gerard's trunk was to be taken ashore, while Laura's remained on board. Laura advised Gerard to take a room in the inn, but she told him that she would not be sharing it with him. Not, of course, that she would give him a hint of her plans. She only smiled and told him that she had made alternate arrangements.

Collinsport seemed a lively, enterprising place. A large stretch of the waterfront was taken up by buildings and docks that Laura pointed out to Gerard as the Collins shipyard. Laura appeared entirely familiar with the town, although no one they encountered seemed to recognize her. At the inn, before Gerard's trunk could even be taken to his room, she asked the landlord if his livery stable was still in operation. On being informed that it was, she instructed Gerard to rent them a buggy, giving him no details except that she needed him to drive her somewhere.

The air was sharp and clear. A few traces of snow lingered in patches of shadow. But spring had clearly come to Collinsport, Maine, and the gleaming sunshine felt glorious. Gerard told himself to be grateful that there was _something_ glorious about the drive, since the roads were churned-up stews of mud that he suspected would prove too much for the buggy wheels. Following Laura's instructions, Gerard drove northward along the coast for a mile or so out of town. Then they turned inland, heading uphill.

Laura looked radiant as the sunshine in her flame-colored day dress. Beneath her jaunty bonnet, its feathers dyed the same vivid orange as her dress, her golden ringlets fluttered in the breeze.

She was undaunted by the struggles of horse and buggy up the muddy hill road. She gaily observed to Gerard, "You haven't a cloak on. I suppose when we reach the hilltop you can use your coat for me to walk on, to keep my shoes out of the mud."

Gerard felt unconvinced that they would reach the hilltop by any means other than on foot. But the buggy and the long-suffering horse lurched their way to the top at last. Gerard only needed to alight from the driver's seat twice to lift the wheels out of the mud.

Their destination, he saw at the crest of the hill, was a cemetery, enclosed by a low fieldstone wall. A carved block set into the wall beside the gate bore the name "Stockbridge."

Gerard parked the buggy in a relatively mud-free spot, eliminating the need for him to play Walter Raleigh in helping his fair companion cross the mud. He eyed Laura warily as they strolled across the cemetery together. The cheerful—even elated—expression on her face gave him no hint at all as to what they were doing there.

This cemetery had been here for around a century and a half, judging by the dates Gerard glimpsed on some of the gravestones they passed. There was only one mausoleum in the place, and Laura was heading straight for it. She drew Gerard to a halt in front of the mausoleum door. Above the door was carved "Stockbridge," just as on the plaque by the cemetery gate.

Laura turned toward Gerard. She smiled up at him and took his hands in hers.

He gasped. Her hands had suddenly gone cold again. They were as cold as they had always been, before that dawn in Lisbon when she set their room on fire and stood singing while her body was consumed in flame.

"This is where we part ways," Laura said. "I will miss you, Gerard. But I know that you will prefer not to keep me company where I am going."

Gerard could not think of a single thing to say to that.

She stood on her toes and gave him one last breeze-cool kiss. She stood back from him then, but still lingered, one hand toying with the ruffles on his shirt.

"I wish you pleasure in your journeys," she told him, still smiling. "May you find what you desire."

Laura turned away and pushed open the heavy iron-bound door. Gerard had expected the door to be locked, but clearly it was not. As he watched with a distant feeling of wonder, Laura Murdoch walked inside into the dark.

He felt uncertain of how long he waited, watching for her return. He supposed it must only have been minutes. The direction of the sunlight had not appreciably changed by the time he shook himself free from his dreamlike stupor.

He had a strong inclination just to run to the cemetery gate and get out. But he knew he couldn't do that before he investigated inside the tomb.

Gerard paused just inside the mausoleum door to let his eyes grow accustomed to the dimness. The doorway faced eastward, and the morning light shone in through it. That provided light enough for him to see by, once he had stepped out of the way so as not to block the sunlight with his own shadow.

What he saw in that faint light made a chill whisper through him.

He saw Laura's footprints in the dust on the mausoleum floor. He saw them clearly, heading down the steps in front of him and then continuing in a straight, unhesitating path toward the mausoleum's back wall. They blazed an unmistakable trail to a memorial plaque which was set into that wall at around waist level. And then they stopped.

Gerard was alone in the mausoleum. He was alone, and Laura was nowhere to be found. But her footprints went in only the one direction. Her footprints showed that she had walked to stand in front of that memorial plaque—and that she had then, apparently, vanished.

He made his own way to the plaque. Carefully he walked beside Laura's footprints so as not to obscure them with his.

He didn't know what he thought he would accomplish by going there. Clearly there was no place in the mausoleum for Laura to hide. Unless, perhaps, the wall concealed some secret passage. Half-heartedly he prodded at the memorial plaque and the stones around it. To his total lack of surprise, none of them budged.

"Hello," a man's voice called from behind him. "What are you doing here?"

He turned. He could see nothing more than the figure of the man, standing silhouetted in the doorway. The man walked down the mausoleum steps and came striding toward him. Gerard winced as he realized that the newcomer had just walked all over Laura's footprints.

The man stopped a foot or so from Gerard. He said again, "Hello. Who are you and how did you get in here? The door should have been locked."

"It wasn't," Gerard answered, studying the man in the dim, dusty light. He was fairly young; probably close to Gerard's own age. He stood half a head taller than Gerard, and had a handsome, clean-cut face. Currently he was watching Gerard with a wary, waiting look: putting together the pieces until he could decide whether or not Gerard was an enemy.

"My name's Gerard Stiles," Gerard went on. "I'm sorry to have intruded. I came here with a friend. She came to visit one of the graves here. I'm afraid the door wasn't locked; she opened it without any difficulty."

"That's very strange. Where's your friend now?"

"She … left."

Understandably, the man looked bemused. "Is that your buggy out front?"

"Yes. Or rather, I hired it from the livery stable."

"I didn't see your friend waiting with the buggy. Or out walking in the cemetery."

"She had her own horse," Gerard improvised. "She left here some while ago; that will be why you didn't encounter her on the road. I stayed here … because I had some thinking to do. I must have lost track of the time."

"Yes," the man said, with a puzzled smile. Then, clearly, he made a decision. He transferred a bouquet of flowers that he was holding from his right hand to his left, and held out his hand to Gerard. "My name's Quentin Collins," he said.

They shook hands. It was a good, firm handshake, and Gerard thought it suggested that Quentin Collins was at least starting to buy his story. Gerard inquired, "Collins as in the Collinses of Collinsport?"

"The very same," Quentin Collins grinned. "Although I don't know whether to be proud of that or ashamed." He noticed Gerard glancing at the flowers he was holding. "I'm here to visit my mother's grave. It's just over there," he explained, nodding his head toward the memorial plaques farther down the wall from the plaque where Laura's footsteps had stopped. Eyeing Gerard curiously again, he asked, "Is that marker you're standing beside the one your friend came to visit?"

"I believe it is."

Once again Quentin Collins grinned in bemusement. "That's a surprise to me, with that grave being as old as it is. Did your friend mention how she is connected to the woman buried there?"

"No … I'm afraid she did not."

"Must be a relative, I guess. Probably on the Murdoch side."

Gerard felt as chilled as though Laura's cold arms had embraced him again. He asked tensely, "Murdoch?"

"That's right." Quentin Collins tilted his head to one side and then chuckled. "It's funny it should be that grave she was visiting. When we were children, the old caretaker who looks after this place used to scare us silly, the way he talked about that grave. He already seemed as old the hills then; Lord alone knows how ancient the old fellow must be by now. Anyhow, I suppose he hoped that if he scared us enough, he could stop us from playing in the cemetery. I'll never forget what he always used to say to us about the woman buried there." Collins lowered his voice to a sepulchral tone and quoted, "'L. Murdoch Stockbridge died by fire.'"

"L. Murdoch Stockbridge," Gerard repeated. He turned to stare down at the plaque beside him.

He hadn't even read it before. The light had seemed too dim for him to bother with it, and he'd been too busy worrying over Laura's footprints and looking for secret passages. But now that Collins had intoned the name, he could read it clearly enough. He crouched down and ran his fingers over the name and the dates below it, deciphering them by sight and touch. He read, _Born 1735, Died 1767_.

"You were right," Gerard said, standing up again. "My friend's family name is Murdoch."

He decidedly did not want to be standing in this mausoleum, having this conversation. With another glance down at the flowers Collins held, he said, "You must want to be alone. I'll be going now. I am sorry to have intruded on your privacy."

"Thanks," Collins answered him. "But would you wait outside for me? I'd like to talk with you some more. It seems there are mysteries here which simply cry out for solving."

Gerard bowed his head to Collins and then hurried out of the tomb. He no longer tried to avoid walking on Laura's footprints. Quentin Collins' stride had already ploughed most of them away.

Gerard wandered the rows of graves near the mausoleum. He idly examined the gravestones' carved skulls and cherubs, urns and weeping willows. To his surprise, he suddenly realized that he was grinning. After pondering his emotions for a moment, he flung back his head and laughed.

The crisp spring breeze ruffled his hair and seemed to dance around him. It seemed to sing to him of escape and freedom and all the promises of new beginnings.

 _She is gone!_ he thought. _She is gone, and I'm finally free!_

Some minutes later Quentin Collins emerged from the mausoleum, locking the door behind him. Hands thrust into his trousers pockets, he strolled over to Gerard.

"It's the anniversary of my mother's death," Collins remarked conversationally. "Harriet Stockbridge Collins. I'm the only one of us who visits here, anymore. Father and Gabriel never emerge from the house—and my wife wouldn't permit our son to come here with me." His voice took on a note of mockery. "She says that for as long as she can, she means to protect him from seeing the darkness in life. But around here," Collins added with a rueful shrug, "if he doesn't see the darkness in life, he'll never see anything at all."

All of a sudden, Gerard decided that he liked this man.

Ordinarily, he might not have warmed to Quentin Collins so easily. Extreme frankness and friendliness were not qualities that Gerard Stiles particularly admired.

But today, Quentin's cheerful openness precisely mirrored Gerard's mood. Perhaps, Gerard thought, he was seeing this fellow Collins as a symbol of his liberation from Laura. He would have no more of Laura's secrets and mysteries; no more living in terror under the threat of fiery doom.

Collins went on, "I take it you're new to town, since I've never met you before?"

"That's right. I only came here as … escort for my friend."

"Then you'll be leaving again with her?"

"No … I think not." He fumbled his way into some kind of explanation. "You see, she and I had already reached a parting of the ways. But she asked me to make this journey with her as one last token of my esteem. She … didn't want to come here alone."

Collins clearly thought it an odd sort of answer, but he pursued it no further. "What are your plans now?"

"I thought I might stay in town and see if I can find employment. Collinsport seems like a promising place to find work."

The expression on Collins' face sharpened with interest. "What sort of work do you do?"

Gerard thought the answer, _Palm-reading and providing companionship to rich, lonely women._ But for his spoken reply, he focused on his other major line of work. "I've a lot of experience as a sailor. Primarily in the Mediterranean, but also on two voyages between Portugal and Brazil. On the second of those, I served as mate."

"Really?" Collins said eagerly. "I'm looking for ship's officers now, for a voyage I'm planning. Are you heading back into town?" At Gerard's nodded assent, Collins grinned and went on, "Good. I'll ride along with you. That way I'll be there to lend a hand, if you happen to get stuck in the mud."

Gerard grinned back and bowed to him. "Your aid will be much appreciated. It will be fitting to have the assistance of a Collins of Collinsport, in combating the Collinsport mud."

They set out together toward the cemetery gate. The gate was flanked now by Gerard's horse and buggy on the one side and Collins' horse on the other. Quentin Collins cheerfully continued, "It'll be noon by the time we get into town. We'll have dinner and a drink—or several—and you can tell me more of your career." He stopped suddenly and clapped a hand on Gerard's shoulder. "You know," Quentin Collins said, "I think it was fate that led us to meet here today."

Gerard Stiles answered him, "I believe you are right."

 _And for a change,_ Gerard thought, _fate is smiling on me._

 _Everything will be different, now. From now on I'm going to feel only the warmth of the sun. Not the heat of the flames._

As they walked on, Gerard looked forward to a golden future.


End file.
